{"id":14346,"date":"2013-03-06T21:25:53","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T02:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=14346"},"modified":"2013-03-06T21:27:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T02:27:06","slug":"spring-training-in-black-and-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/03\/06\/spring-training-in-black-and-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring training in black and white"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

John Fea<\/a> directs us to this terrific LIFE<\/em> magazine photo album from Dodgertown, spring training in Vero Beach, Fla., in 1948<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That photo is by LIFE\u2019s George Silk, and there are plenty more at the gallery linked above.<\/p>\n

This was spring training the year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball \u2014 the year after the big year of 1947 and Jackie and Larry Doby and the major milestone of baseball\u2019s first black players.<\/p>\n

But while the playing fields of Dodgertown were integrated in 1948, the rest of Vero Beach \u2014 and the rest of spring training \u2014 was not.<\/p>\n

This was still the segregated South. This was still Jim Crow.<\/p>\n

And it would stay that way for another 14 seasons \u2014 until after the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, until years after Jackie Robinson retired.<\/p>\n

Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947, and by 1960, every team had black players. But every team still had spring training, and spring training means heading south.<\/p>\n

Bill White<\/a>, who was an All Star and Gold Glover for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1950s and \u201960s, described what that meant in an article for CNN.com a few years ago<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When I started playing for the Cardinals in 1959, the team\u2019s black players \u2014 great players like Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, George Crowe and others \u2014 weren\u2019t allowed to stay in the team hotel during spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida. Instead we were put up in a boarding house in the \u201cblack section\u201d of town.<\/p>\n

Restaurants, hotels, swimming pools, bathrooms, drinking fountains, even the stands in the spring training ballparks we played in were segregated. The only place we could hang out with our white teammates was in the locker room and on the field.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most baseball fans think of players like Gibson and Flood as members of the next generation \u2014 black superstars who played in the years after segregation and the color barrier. But for much of their career, such players spent every spring living under the segregated system of Jim Crow.<\/p>\n

Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks, Juan Marichal, Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey are players we tend to think of as coming after<\/em> all of that. But for many years for all of them, spring training meant segregated restaurants, hotels and bathrooms.<\/p>\n

When we think of segregation and baseball, we think of it as something long, long ago, but segregated spring training was part of the baseball career of players like Dick Allen, Willie Stargell, Lou Brock, Tony Perez, Donn Clendenon, and Matty, Felipe and Jesus Alou.<\/p>\n

Bill White describes how that eventually changed:<\/p>\n

In 1961, some black players \u2014 me included \u2014 began to speak out publicly against the off-the-field segregation we had to endure during Florida spring training.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t an easy thing to do. This was before baseball free agency, a time when the \u201creserve clause\u201d gave team owners complete control over a player\u2019s career. A player who was thought to be too outspoken \u2014 the word \u201cuppity\u201d was sometimes used \u2014 ran the risk of being sent down to the minors or released. But we felt it had to be done.<\/p>\n

It worked. As the story went national, pressure built on major league teams to do something. In the Cardinals\u2019 case, when the team hotel in St. Petersburg still refused to admit blacks, the team leased a small beachfront motel for the entire team. Soon people were driving by to gawk at the then-unprecedented sight \u2014 in the Deep South, anyway \u2014 of black men and white men and their families living together, eating together, even swimming in the same pool together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It took a couple of years, but according to\u00a0Harry Kingman<\/a>,* 1962 was the last year any of the teams had segregated facilities for spring training.<\/p>\n

Even then, though, the teams\u2019 integrated facilities were still down south under Jim Crow. Dodgertown was desegregated in 1961, but the rest of Vero Beach wouldn\u2019t be for several more years.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* Kingman, a former ballplayer, supported the black players\u2019 efforts to desegregate spring training through his advocacy group,\u00a0The Citizens\u2019 Lobby for Freedom and Fair Play. Referring to Kingman as a former ballplayer doesn\u2019t begin to tell the story, though. He started only one game, going 0-for-3 with a walk for the 1914 Yankees. Baseball-wise he is remembered only as the lone Major Leaguer to have been born in China. He left after one season to become a missionary in Shanghai, where he also coached baseball. He got booted out of there for upsetting the colonial authorities for all the right reasons, so in 1927, while his former team was dominating the American League, he was coaching baseball in Japan. \u2026 Go read Bob Timmerman\u2019s SABR bio of Kingman<\/a> for a look at a long and fascinating life. \u201cSon, if I\u2019d only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes\u2026 now that would have been a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the playing fields of Dodgertown were integrated in 1948, the rest of Vero Beach — and the rest of spring training — was not. This was still the segregated South. This was still Jim Crow. And it would stay that way for another 14 seasons — until after the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, until years after Jackie Robinson retired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSpring training in black and white<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While the playing fields of Dodgertown were integrated in 1948, the rest of Vero Beach -- and the rest of spring training -- was not. This was still the segregated South. This was still Jim Crow. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Spring training in black and white","description":"While the playing fields of Dodgertown were integrated in 1948, the rest of Vero Beach -- and the rest of spring training -- was not. This was still the segregated South. This was still Jim Crow. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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